This section is intended to introduce the reader to aspects of art that may be related to various aspects of the present disclosure described herein, which are described and/or claimed below. This discussion is believed to be helpful in providing the reader with background information to facilitate a better understanding of the various aspects of the present disclosure described herein. Accordingly, it should be understood that these statements are to be read in this light, and not as admissions of prior art.
A geothermal heat pump or ground source heat pump (GHP) is a central heating and/or cooling system that transfers heat to or from the ground. The traditional heat and cooling equipment delivered from the manufacture uses air for cooling and heating operations. GHP systems can use the earth as a heat source in cold winter climates or as a heat sink in warm summer climates. This design takes advantage of the moderate temperatures in the ground to boost efficiency and reduce the operational costs of heating and cooling systems, and may be combined with HVAC systems and energy conservation systems. GHPs employ a heat exchanger in contact with the ground or groundwater to extract or dissipate heat. This component accounts for anywhere from a fifth to half of the total system cost, and would be the most cumbersome part to repair or replace. In conventional GHP systems, the heat exchanger unit is in fluid communication with a loop of tubing buried in the ground, commonly referred to as a ground loop. A variety of ground loop configurations can be used with geothermal heat pump systems. For “closed-loop” configurations, in which the ground loop provides a closed circuit for the circulating heat exchange fluid, two known configurations are commonly employed, namely horizontal closed-loop and vertical closed-loop configurations. In the horizontal closed-loop configuration, the ground loop is typically laid horizontally, or in a directionally drilled borehole, in a shallow trench dug into the ground adjacent to a building structure that is to be serviced by the geothermal heat pump system. In the vertical closed-loop configuration, the ground loop is typically placed in a 100 foot to 400 foot deep borehole formed in the ground adjacent to the building structure to be serviced by the GHP system. The heat exchanger unit must specifically be designed for the specific location and application. Correctly sizing the heat exchanger and loop configuration and design is necessary to assure long-term performance and energy efficiency of the whole system.
Even though geothermal heat pump equipment is know to be very energy efficient, sales in the United State have been limited to generally about 1.5% of the heating and cooling industry. One of the main causes for limited sales is the lack of knowledgeable people in the industry that know how to accurately design the in-ground heat exchanger required. Designing geothermal heat pump equipment for residential, commercial, and institutional buildings can be very complex especially for models that have a very high level of detail. GHP designers can easily be overwhelmed with the amount of information and variables for designing such GHP systems without the help of computer based design analysis and simulations.
Currently, there are many types of software programs that exist for in-ground vertical or horizontal loop geothermal heat pump design and simulation. However, these programs are largely ineffective, typically designed for residential applications (not commercial), provide a complex user interface, have limited or no internet/web based accessibility or connectivity, have slow computational speeds, require other third party front-end software for various calculations, and do not have up to date or real time data of geographical, weather, climate, soil, rock data, do not allow detailed parameters and multiple zones of a building design to be set (i.e. schedule/time for multiple building zones), do not allow for hybrid designs and comparisons (i.e. adding/removing cooling towers), do not provide accurate results that allow a designer to be confident in implementing the data in a real-world application, and the programs themselves are costly to develop, operate, distribute, and be adopted by commercial designers.
Hence, what is needed is a simple to use web-based geothermal heat pump design, simulation, and analysis program that can be accessed by users using any type of mobile or computing device, provides a simple to use interface, allows the user to run multiple design and analysis simulations, select from multiple heat pump manufacturers, automatically populate and gather geographical, building, and hourly weather data in real-time, allow the user to set exact and specific building parameters (such as a buildings schedule/operational hours for each zone within a building), automatically correct raw heat pump data into actual heat pump performance, and further provide actual cost basis, hybrid designs, operating costs, benchmark, and efficiency comparisons.